Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday October 26, 2010 @05:33PM
from the all-squeezed-out dept.

tekgoblin writes with news that a federal judge has issued a permanent injunction against LimeWire for copyright infringement and unfair competition. A notice on the LimeWire home page says "THIS IS AN OFFICIAL NOTICE THAT LIMEWIRE IS UNDER A COURT-ORDERED INJUNCTION TO STOP DISTRIBUTING AND SUPPORTING ITS FILE-SHARING SOFTWARE. DOWNLOADING OR SHARING COPYRIGHTED CONTENT WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION IS ILLEGAL." An anonymous reader points to coverage at CNET, too.

www.emule-project.com - open source, so it can't be shut down. I guess the servers could be shut down, but it also operates with a distributed peer2peer network
as back up. I've been using it for years, it has almost everything.

Even easier fix - if a service is "Common Carrier", it is not responsible for the content on it. That is why phone services can't be sued if someone does something illegal over them, same with the post office. (Which is one big reason it's Bad Juju for ISPs to differentiate between users. If they aren't Common Carrier, they ARE liable for content. Same as newspapers or magazines are, even if the author of an article isn't a member of the staff. They're not Common Carriers, they select. Slashdot isn't liable for comments again because they're Common Carrier - they're not selecting who can post and everyone plays by the same rules - even though in many ways they look like a newspaper.)

In the Old Days, when people used Archie to find files, the authors of FTP and Archie weren't liable for a damn thing. Common Carriers. LimeWire is perceived (right or wrong) as not a Common Carrier. Fix that perception (if necessary by fixing the code) and the law will protect it in every country that recognizes the notion. (Which is most of them, US included.)

Perhaps I've misunderstood, but to be protected as a common carrier, don't you have to have the government classify you as one? I don't think you get to just wake up one day and say "hey, I'm a common carrier, you can't touch me! na na na na na!" once the court/feds/whoever decide they don't like what you're doing

This suggests that there are requirements for being considered a telecom common carrier including reports that have to be filed yearly, etc. - http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/filing.html [fcc.gov]

To be an American and anti-gun is to be, literally, a walking oxymoron. But to specifically address your question, anyone who attempts to push an anti-gun agenda on Americans is a crazy person as well as Un-American. If you don't like guns, fine; I completely support your right. But to attempt to go crazy, subverting the very rights which allow you to have such an opinion, is crazy, anti-constitution, and flat out Un-American.

I feel the same way for anyone who believes they have the right to censor speech.

I'm Anglo-American, raised in Britain but have birth certificates (legally) for both countries. My view on guns is non-trivial, but can be summarized as:

Nations with few or no guns are probably better off not getting more.

Some nations have been highly successful in developing an understanding between the legal and criminal organizations. Where this balance works in practice, disturbing the balance with firearms is probably not a good idea.

Slashdot isn't liable for comments again because they're Common Carrier - they're not selecting who can post and everyone plays by the same rules...

No.

Slashdot isn't liable for certain kinds of "illegal" material (namely, defamation - i.e., libel) because of section 230 of the Telecom Act of '96 [wikipedia.org]. Basically, because it is a "provider of an interactive computer service," and because comments and even stories are provided by "another information content provider" (i.e., users like you and me), Slashdot is immune from any liability it would normally have for being the publisher or speaker of "illegal speech" (like defamation, but potentially also intrusions on privacy and the like).

Section 230 *does not* provide immunity for copyright infringement - instead, the DMCA's notice and take-down system gives Slashdot immunity so long as it promptly takes down infringing material after being served notice by the copyright owner. A common carrier, however, would (I think) be immune to liability for copyright infringement even with notice that a user was using its service to infringe copyrights.

Both of those safe harbors (230 and the DMCA notice and take-down) look a lot like the protections normally given to common carriers - so it's understandable that you might think that that's what they are. But its not the case. Slashdot cannot be a common carrier because it does more than "carry." It chooses what stories to publish on its website, and that kind of discretion means that it doesn't provide "common" access to its service. Further, as another poster points out, common carrier status has to be provided by law; one doesn't qualify for common carrier protections just by adhering to a certain kind of business practice.

How so? That's just the publication of source code. You certainly can't - for example - provide/run an application/service that infringes the patents, copyrights, etc... of another party just because it's open source. Otherwise all limewire would have to do is open-source their software and they'd be back in business.

"Otherwise all limewire would have to do is open-source their software and they'd be back in business."

Limewire HAS ALWAYS BEEN open-source.

And because of that (they tried to charge for it like morons,) Frostwire and many other fuller-featured versions came out, that worked better and had the EXACT same interface with a different-colored skin.

Actually people should continue making shitty file sharing services and basing them in the US. That way the *IAA's of this world can feel like they're winning even as they are completely unable to do anything about torrent.

...And while you're at it, make those programs easier to use than torrent, so all the newbies make them popular and it seems like BIG NEWS when one gets whacked on the head with a hammer!

Actually people should continue making shitty file sharing services and basing them in the US. That way the *IAA's of this world can feel like they're winning even as they are completely unable to do anything about torrent.

The *IAA's don't want to win. Winning would mean a marginal increase in new sales (from the downloaders who actually can afford the stuff they download), but a sharp decrease in profits from extremely punitive lawsuits. Their optimal move is to continue playing both ends of the game (dues from artists paying essentially protection fees and settlements/damages from lawsuits). All they really have to do is continue lobbying enough to keep the status quo and drown out any artists that attempt to call them out.

Would you believe that they actually [blogspot.com] lose [techdirt.com] money [arstechnica.com] on that shit? Lawyers aren't cheap, especially evil lawyers (even though they make up most of the supply).

That's a fallacy. Music pirates have been shown in study after study to spend more on music than non-pirates.

It has never once been shown by any reputable research that anybody ever lost a cent to piracy.

The RIAA's war against file sharing isn't a war against pirates, it's a war against indies (their competetion), who use the internet to get their works in your ears. The RIAA has a monopoly on radio airplay, the indies don't.

And the search sites can very well be hidden onion services... just add a Tor client to popular torrent clients and a button to launch the browser configured to use the Tor proxy, and anyone will be able to use it.

Actually I've found it was up to this day VERY popular with the clueless. As a PC repairman I ask my fellow repairmen to bow their heads in a silent moment and give thanks to the HUGE number of viruses from the fake files on Limewire and Kazaa, which made many of us mucho money. Hell the whole thing was plumb full of "name_of_popular_song.mp3.exe" viruses that the clueless would fall for time and time again.

"As a PC repairman I ask my fellow repairmen to bow their heads in a silent moment and give thanks to the HUGE number of viruses from the fake files on Limewire and Kazaa, which made many of us mucho money."

*WHAP!* That's for implying that torrents are anywhere near safe.

Do you know how many idiots have a fucking rootkitted Windows install because they got it from torrents? I live in Southern California, I have ABSOLUTELY ZERO shortage of business on that end.

Do you know how many idiots have a fucking rootkitted Windows install because they got it from torrents? I live in Southern California, I have ABSOLUTELY ZERO shortage of business on that end.

Funny thing about torrents. It turns out that usually the main install executable is perfectly fine - it installs a clean copy of whatever program you're pirating. And since most commercial developers even code-sign their setup.exe files, you can even vie

The advantage of P2P's like Limewire was that it did not share crappy_commercial_music.mp3 while you were downloading crappy_commercial_music.mp3, and as such you could not be fingered for the crime of distributing crappy_commercial_music.mp3 since you were in fact not distributing it.

The advantage of P2P's like Limewire was that it did not share crappy_commercial_music.mp3 while you were downloading crappy_commercial_music.mp3, and as such you could not be fingered for the crime of distributing crappy_commercial_music.mp3 since you were in fact not distributing it.

Uhhh...yeah, and clearly your "logic" with "one-way" downloading of illegal content somehow saved them from a legal injunction...

The advantage of P2P's like Limewire was that it did not share crappy_commercial_music.mp3 while you were downloading crappy_commercial_music.mp3, and as such you could not be fingered for the crime of distributing crappy_commercial_music.mp3 since you were in fact not distributing it.

Uhhh...yeah, and clearly your "logic" with "one-way" downloading of illegal content somehow saved them from a legal injunction...

You're confused. The GP wasn't talking about why Limewire got screwed by the courts, that was an entirely different matter. He is, in fact, talking about the Limewire user base, and there he is correct, at least for those users with a functioning cerebral cortex. The bulk of RIAA lawsuits were for people that stupidly didn't turn off file sharing on their various Gnutella clients (Limewire being only one of many) and "helpful" clients that automatically shared everything they downloaded, thereby making targets out of their users. Downloading isn't where the illegality came it: it was the illegal distribution of copyright materials.

Actually correct. Check out Ray Beckerman's blog if you want some more information on that subject. If you're using a Gnutella-style network and you turn off sharing you aren't distributing anything. So far as I've been able to tell, all of the 30,000-odd RIAA lawsuits have been about illegal distribution, not downloading.

Hi. Let me walk you through turning the fucking file sharing off, since you are apparently TOO NAIVE to have looked through the entire thing in order to understand the workings of the system.

You first install it (ignore the ask toolbar as always, uncheck it and move on)

When it FIRST LOADS UP, it asks you where you want to download, and which folders you want to share - uncheck all the folders under 'shared' box, click them and hit 'remove,' and pick your download location or leave it default, click next.

Tell Limewire your connection type, click next.

A couple more menus in, it will ask you what file types you'd like to share directly with LimeWire itself, uncheck all of those, click next.

Before you've even had the opportunity to download anything, you've been given the options to turn off ALL SHARING.

You are no longer sharing files and will not upload whatever you download.

Was it that hard? You didn't even have to look for a settings menu, THE INNER WORKINGS THAT MATTER THE MOST TO YOU ARE EXPOSED TO YOU BEFORE YOU ARE ALLOWED TO DO ANYTHING.

Don't speak unless you've actually used the program, please. I re-installed it A. for nostalgia and B. to prove you know absolutely nothing of which you speak.

Frostwire (the free 'pro' version of Limewire) has the EXACT SAME PROCEDURE, as does any faithful open-source LimeWire clone using LimeWire's open-source.

Gnutella (the protocol LimeWire uses) is decentralized, but you have to "bootstrap" the client to find your first few peers. I believe LimeWire LLC operates servers to facilitate this, but it could be done any number of ways. If you had a friend whom you knew was always on LimeWire and had a static IP, you could connect to him. The client could also cache the addresses of nodes that had worked in the past, and try them. I don't know exactly how LimeWire does it, but it seems to me LimeWire's failing is that by insinuating itself between its users and the network (for the purposes of operating a business), it makes itself the single point of failure.

Peer discovery is the very essence of the Gnutella protocol used by Gnutella. The Limewire client probably uses Limewire's servers to get an initial list of peers to connect to but beyond that, they shouldn't be needed. There are alternative methods to do this initial peer discovery as well so even if you take away Limewire's servers, things should still work fine, it just may take longer for your client to discover a decent amount of peers.

It's about time. Those Somalians with AK-47s can release the hostages now. Ugly business, piracy - ships destroyed, sailors killed, lives ruined. I'm glad the government is finally doing something about protecting shipping lanes. Apparently LimeWire is some sort of service that these pirates use to track ships or something.

Good riddance. Limewire has been a cesspool for years. Nothing but bogus files, many of which are infested with malware. I just cleaned out an acquaintances computer that was rooted due to downloading phony music videos that were supposed to be WMV files. I told him I had to uninstall Limewire to prevent future infections (he is not a savvy computer user at all).

The notice on the website refers to the a court order (written -- or, at least, approved -- by a judge), but is not itself a court order, and most likely is written by someone responsible for LimeWire's website (no doubt, on directions from one of their attorneys) after they received the order.

Frostwire's still up. http://www.frostwire.com/ [frostwire.com]. Limewire != Gnutella, which is decentralized and thus impossible to shut down completely.

On a related note, I can't believe how stupid this ruling is. It's a Gnutella client! That's it! Limewire is responsible for nothing; it's the illegal distributors of copyrighted works, which LimeWire isn't, that are legally responsible for any of this. What's next, making HTTP/FTP/BitTorrent/the Internet illegal because it "encourages illegal file-sharing"? Give me a break! Some of the best legal to download music I've found was promoted by Frostwire! The problem isn't file-sharing, obviously, but an outdated business model and a resistance to change.

On a related note, I can't believe how stupid this ruling is. It's a Gnutella client! That's it! Limewire is responsible for nothing; it's the illegal distributors of copyrighted works, which LimeWire isn't, that are legally responsible for any of this.

Part of what got Limewire shut down was their marketing.Ontop of everything else they put on their website, they bought keywords like kazaa, morpheus, and napster.Limewire did this to themselves in their rush to fill the void left by previous filesharing programs.

DOWNLOADING OR SHARING COPYRIGHTED CONTENT WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION IS ILLEGAL.

Yes, that is correct. But how can they shut down LimeWire through the vicarious actions of its users? It is the user's who are responsible. They share the data. Unless LimeWire themselves is hosting the copyrighted bits, what are they doing wrong? If they provide some helper service for getting nodes connected, perhaps that is the 'gotcha'. But even then, if they are just managing connections, they still are not hosting the data (AFAIK).

Should we shutdown chat clients and protocols because they allow people to disseminate links to copyright infringed data?
Should we shutdown production of all copy machines because they could be used to infringe copyright?
Should we ban hard-drives because they could be used to store copy-righted data?
Should we ban the human-brain because it could retain the contents of a copyrighted document?

Re. Tard. Ed.

Also, does the injunction necessitate YELLING? I know the out-moded channels are scared and all, but that is just icing on the cake.

Under the law, the fact that A committed and is responsible for action X does not imply that B is not also responsible.

Nor does it imply that B is responsible! If you use Slashdot as a forum for coordinating criminal activity, is Slashdot responsible? It is an easy way out to blame the tools, but it is the people who use the tools that are responsible. Should gasoline be banned because gasoline manufactures knowingly foster and enable the production of a chemical that could be used for illegal things? Hell no.

A chooses to commit action X.
Action X is illegal.
-----
A is responsible for committing illegal action X.

I'm sure the judge realizes the ruling makes no sense and is illegal by Constitutional standards. But people exchanging others' work is intolerable, so a little judicial activism is called for. Practicality is far more important when creating law than justice or logic.

"RIAA lawyers have told the judge that LimeWire costs the record labels about $500 million in lost music sales every month."

So with LimeWire shut down, will record sales increase by $500 million every month? Hopefully they will use current sales figures including the 2 months AFTER the shutdown to calculate the lost sales prior to the shutdown and not just take the RIAA lawyers word for it. My guess is they will see little, if any, sales difference after the shutdown.

That wont matter the will just shift the blame to the next target, just as they focused on Limewire after Napster, as long as there is anything to pin blame on they don't have to actually have any real data to backup their claims. I fully expect that at an upcoming awards show we will see some digital holdout musician like Paul McCartney touting a new pay service calling itself Limewire attempting to live off past name recognition despite a poor business model.

My guess is they will see little, if any, sales difference after the shutdown.

Well that's where you'd be wrong. My bet is on sales going down now that less people will be exposed to new music. Then within a few weeks it will climb back up as friends learn from friends about this new thing called...

Yes, FTP is next.;) Not my sneakernet though. Thanks for the reminder, I need to obtain a 1TB drive for more sweet, free, sneakernet content. Really, we only need one person to buy any single piece of media, then we dist. Everyone is invited. RIP, share, enjoy. Never been to limewire.

If you go back in history a bit, you'll find plenty of relics along the way. You'll find Sean Fanning's Napster, ScourXchange, WinMX, Morpheus, Kazaa, Bearshare, and now Limewire. I don't care about any of those. My example right now is DVDXCopy. Back when DVDXCopy came out, I remember seeing it in the acrylic boxes at CompUSA, being sold for $100 a pop. Its claim to fame: making it stupid simple to make copies of copy protected DVDs. IMO it propelled the D